4 ms·

i just upgraded my Windows 7 PC from a 2012 desktop to a modern 2021-level Windows 10 desktop with i7 CPU, 32 GB memory, etc. I honestly can't tell the differe

i just upgraded my Windows 7 PC from a 2012 desktop to a modern 2021-level Windows 10 desktop with i7 CPU, 32 GB memory, etc. I honestly can't tell the difference between the two systems. I don't play games which is probably the biggest thing driving upgrades, but for everything that I need to do, which is an advanced use, my 10 year old Windows 7 system was more than good enough. The only reason why I did end up upgrading was because I bought a 10Gbe switch, and the motherboard in my Windows 7 PC didn't support the bus speed required for 10 GBe speeds. I'm pretty sure that it's not worth $1000 just to change my compiles from 30 seconds to 5 seconds so I'm not sure what the compelling reason to upgrade is for the hundreds of millions of other users except a fake Windows 11 upgrade forcing a hardware upgrade.

muststopmyths 5y ago
To be completely fair, there were significant upgrades to the networking stack in Windows 8, so you probably got more support for your 10Gbe switch than just the motherboard change. Between 8 and 10, though.. yeah. The only reason to upgrade between those was if you hated 8 (I loved it on tablets/phone, not on desktop). There are many Microsoft-hatred-driven reasons to not upgrade from 7 to 10, but lack of progress in the underlying OS is definitely not one of them. People confuse the shell with the OS all the time (and yeah the shell is atrocious and gets worse every iteration), but it's not the entirety of what makes a Windows version. NB: "shell" here means the thing hosting the UI (including Explorer), not a unix shell.
thrower123 5y ago
The biggest difference I noticed in upgrading from a 2011-vintage desktop to a 2020 desktop is that npm and all the JS-heavy compiling and bundling operations were much faster. That's got to be almost entirely CPU-based, because I kept the same SSDs and graphics card when I built the new machine. If it weren't for Gulp and WebPack, I could have kept using that old machine, even for my moderate gaming purposes, until it wore out.
rasz 5y ago
Windows 7 lacks 'UP the directory structure' button in the explorer :)

muststopmyths 5y ago

To be completely fair, there were significant upgrades to the networking stack in Windows 8, so you probably got more support for your 10Gbe switch than just the motherboard change. Between 8 and 10, though.. yeah. The only reason to upgrade between those was if you hated 8 (I loved it on tablets/phone, not on desktop). There are many Microsoft-hatred-driven reasons to not upgrade from 7 to 10, but lack of progress in the underlying OS is definitely not one of them. People confuse the shell with the OS all the time (and yeah the shell is atrocious and gets worse every iteration), but it's not the entirety of what makes a Windows version. NB: "shell" here means the thing hosting the UI (including Explorer), not a unix shell.

thrower123 5y ago

The biggest difference I noticed in upgrading from a 2011-vintage desktop to a 2020 desktop is that npm and all the JS-heavy compiling and bundling operations were much faster. That's got to be almost entirely CPU-based, because I kept the same SSDs and graphics card when I built the new machine. If it weren't for Gulp and WebPack, I could have kept using that old machine, even for my moderate gaming purposes, until it wore out.

rasz 5y ago

Windows 7 lacks 'UP the directory structure' button in the explorer :)